Froome and Wiggins are not believed to be close and there will inevitably be speculation about how they could work together in the same team. But Brailsford said he feels that "without a doubt" the two Tour winners, who finished first and second when Sky dominated in 2012, can combine to target the race next year.

"It would be brilliant," said Brailsford. "I think it's brilliant that we'll go to a Tour de France starting in our home country with the reigning champion. It's bonkers really, when you think about it.

"On a personal level, I'd love to, because they're such great talents. If we hadn't decided: 'Let's go for more than one Grand Tour,' and thought: 'How do we use the riders we've got in different ways?'; if we said: 'We'll just try to win the Tour next year, and you put the nine absolute tip top guys for next year,' that would be a strong team."

Asked about the common perception that Wiggins and Froome do not get on, the team principal said: "I'm not interested in that. Everyone goes on about it, can they be friends? I don't spend a nanosecond worrying about whether they get on or not."

Speculation has been intense about whether Wiggins and Froome can work together since the 2012 Tour, in which Froome rode ahead of his leader on the key mountain stage to La Toussuire, prompting Wiggins to say afterwards that he felt he was coming under attack from his own team-mate.

The question of whether the pair could co-operate in leading Sky raised its head again in the spring when Wiggins said he was aiming to win both the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France, prompting Froome to issue a statement saying he would be Sky's sole leader in France.

Sky do not like having joint leaders, so the most likely situation would be that one of the two would be appointed leader and the other kept back as Plan B, as was the case in 2012. That is unlikely to find favour with Froome should he be asked to take second billing. On Monday Froome said that he felt confident of winning more Tours. "I'd like to think I'm well balanced," he said. "I can time trial reasonably, I can climb pretty well, I can't see what else they can put in the Tour that I would struggle with so I'd like to think I can come back every year. It would be a shame not to carry that experience forward and use it in future editions."

But the question of personal relationships does not bother Brailsford, who accepts that his teams are not comfortable places to work, and says that having the entire team lined up behind a common objective – "goal harmony" is the jargon he uses – is all that matters.

"People talk about having team unity and team harmony; I don't buy that at all. Most of the best teams I've been with are not harmonious environments. This is not a harmonious environment. This is a gritty environment where people are pushing really hard."

Wiggins has not raced since abandoning the Giro in May but has been training hard in Mallorca in recent weeks – he is understood to have ridden more than 30 hours last week – and is due to start the Tour of Poland next weekend. He then expects to target the Tour of Britain in early September before his big objective for the end of the season, the world time trial championship on 26 September.

"The level of success Bradley had to deal with was massive," said Brailsford. "What he's done this year is adjust very quickly, reset his goals, which is standard procedure for him. He's very, very motivated and in great shape now, going into Poland, and then on to the individual time trial at the worlds.

"Then you stop at the end of the year, you draw a line and you look at next year, look at everything you've got, at the different races, and then you decide how best to deploy your resources to get the best results."

Brailsford added that in spite of Wiggins's assertion that he no longer sees himself targeting victory at the Tour de France, he can "potentially" see him leading Sky in the Giro, Vuelta a España or Tour. "You can't rule anything out. You all laughed when I told you we were going to win the Tour in five years. If I'd told you we would win it twice with two different riders you'd have pissed your pants."